Edward Batten
Edward Batten (c1863-1941)
1941 Obituary [1]
EDWARD BATTEN was the inventor and patentee of inlaid linoleum machinery, in which he specialized for over thirty years of his professional career. He received his technical education at King's College, London, and served his apprenticeship from 1882 to 1885 with Mr. T. A. W. Clarke in Leicester. During the latter year he assisted Professor George Forbes in the development of his "N on Polar" dynamo.
From 1886 to 1894 he was employed in the works and drawing office of Mr. R. W. Munro in London, where he was engaged on the development of Tower's spherical engine and gyrostat, coin weighing machines and banknote and postal order printing machinery, and also on experimental moulding machinery for Spezia and St. Petersburg. In 1895 he went to the Frederick Walton Mosaic Inlaid Linoleum Company, Ltd., and in the following year to the Greenwich Inlaid Linoleum Company, Ltd., at both of which firms he was employed in designing plant for manufacturing linoleum. From 1897 to 1899, he was engaged in designing, constructing and erecting similar machinery for Messrs. Wicander and Larrob, of Libau, Russia. He was afterwards for ten years engineer director to Messrs. Barry, Ostler, and Shepherd, Ltd., of Kirkcaldy, and was responsible for the maintenance of 2,000 h.p. of engines, with boilers and machinery.
From 1912 until his retirement in 1926 he was consultant engineer to the Nairn Linoleum Company in Newark, New Jersey, U.S.A., and to the Dominion Floorcloth and Linoleum Company of Montreal, Canada. Mr. Batten, whose death occurred in Lewes on 7th February 1941, in his seventy-eighth year, was elected a Member of the Institution in 1913. He was also the author of several books on economics.